Mean tweets foil promising White House official's career

Oct. 24, 2013
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White House press secretary Jay Carney gestures during his daily news briefing Wednesday at the White House in Washington. The White House fired a staff member who hurled insults via a secret feed on Twitter. / Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

by Aamer Madhani and Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

by Aamer Madhani and Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - A White House national security official who took to Twitter to anonymously slam colleagues and brutally antagonize Republican adversaries is out of a job.

The White House on Wednesday sought to distance itself from Jofi Joseph, 40, a nuclear non-proliferation expert in the Obama administration whose career was on the rise before it was discovered that he had been anonymously tweeting vitriolic opinions about prominent Washington establishment figures.

Joseph posted under the handle @NatSecWonk for two years before the account was shut down last week. He was followed by a small but influential group of national security experts, government officials and journalists.

A White House official, who was not authorized to talk about the matter so spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Joseph was fired last week but would not offer any other details on how Joseph was discovered as the man behind @NatSecWonk.

In his tweets, Joseph savaged both administration colleagues and adversaries, taking shots at various high-ranking administration officials' and lawmakers' intellect and appearance.

He questioned a prominent lawmaker's sexual preference in one tweet, and in at least two other tweets he charged - without evidence - that a prominent Obama adviser was behind the press leak of a classified joint U.S.-Israeli cyber warfare effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday confirmed that Joseph left his post at the White House last week. But Carney declined to comment in detail about the controversy surrounding Joseph, who was first outed as the author behind @NatSecWonk by the website the Daily Beast.

"There are obviously codes of conduct in general," Carney said.

Dozens of senior administration officials use Twitter accounts that are authorized by the White House as part of the Obama administration's robust social media operation. But in general, "White House employees are not able to access social media sites like that at all for personal use," from White House computers and devices, Carney said.

By his own estimation, Joseph was mean-spirited.

"I'm a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me," Joseph wrote about the president's senior adviser in one tweet.

"Whenever I see @arifleischer I remember that he is the living incarnation of that old saw that 'DC is Hollywood for ugly people', " he wrote in another about former President George W. Bush's press secretary.

In a statement to Politico, Joseph took responsibility for the account and apologized.

"What started out as an intended parody account of D.C. culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments," he said in the statement. "I bear complete responsibility for this affair and I sincerely apologize to everyone I insulted."

Joseph, who previously worked for Vice President Biden when he headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., was also stripped of his security clearance, according to the White House official. Early in the Obama administration, he served as senior adviser to undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher, specializing in arms control and non-proliferation efforts.

Carney said that Joseph originally was detailed to the national security staff at the White House by the State Department. More recently, he transitioned to the White House national security staff payroll.

Before his Twitter account was uncovered, he appeared destined for another important job in the Obama administration.

Joseph was a leading candidate for a senior posting at the Defense Department, according to two senior Pentagon officials who requested anonymity in order to speak about personnel matters.